For Google, It's Game On

By Dana Blankenhorn: Google's (GOOG) acquisition of Motorola is finally complete. While many analysts said when the deal was first announced that Google was just after patents, CEO Larry Page has in fact put together a new executive team for the unit, headed by Dennis Woodside, who managed the two companies' integration.Woodside's team is near the Googleplex, but not in it. The company promised to create a "firewall" between his group and Andy Rubin's Android team. But Woodside is hiring his own engineers to improve aspects of Android most upsetting to users - battery life, the handling of pictures. Etc.There are many skeptics of the decision. Simon Phipps, former head of open source at Sun [now part of Oracle (ORCL)], tweeted "copying Oracle?" And on the surface there are similarities. Both Motorola and Sun are hardware outfits. Both are former market leaders that have become laggards.But Sun was, and is,Complete Story »

Rick Wilking/ReutersOracle is suing Google for billions of dollars and on Thursday Larry Page, the CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, was called to the stand by Oracle's lawyers to testify.
Oracle's lawyers asked him about the revenue that Google generates from its Android software, which is something Google doesn't publicly discuss.

Andy Rubin, the Google Inc. (GOOG) executive credited for the co-creation of the Android ecosystem, has reportedly left the company amid an ongoing robotics race. The former Android chief, who took over as head of Google’s secretive robotics division, plans to pursue his dream of creating an incubator for startups eager to build technology-hardware products.

As promised, Oracle and Salesforce.com announced a new partnership today. This is a big get for Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. It's a massive nine-year deal in which Salesforce.com agreed to buy a whole bunch of Oracle's software and hardware for an undisclosed sum.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz took the stand on Monday in Oracle's ongoing trial in which it's suing Google for billions of dollars.
And Catz dropped a few interesting tidbits while she was being questioned.
Among them: Oracle didn't buy Sun just to sue Google.

Nearly two years ago, Google announced a new robotics division that had secretly snapped up more than half a dozen companies. The state of those efforts is now in flux, and the group is in a difficult position as it tries to meet a goal of creating consumer robot technology by 2020.